The Man of Mystery Hill

Chapter One

Abby McNabb fidgeted on her front steps, waiting for Dad to show up. Her best friend, Claudia Candle, a giddy nine-year-old blonde girl, sat beside her, glancing down the street in anticipation of their ride. Abby frowned with jealousy at her friend who lived two streets away with her parents, the boring and predictable Lily and George Candle.

What Abby wouldnt give to have a mom and dad a fraction as unnoticeable. Her mom, Saffron McNabb: utterly gorgeous with lush black hair and green eyes. Mom wanted to blend in, made every effort to hide her beauty behind baggy clothes and a dowdy look. She held a job as a librarian to keep a low profile.

No use. She was a knockout and couldn't even go to the grocery store without guys falling all over her. In her defense, not Mom's faultborn prettybut it still embarrassed Abby when guys whistled at her.

Abby's father, Andy McNabb, welltoo interesting. Downright weird. Obsessed with aliens, other worlds, and everything others considered fake. Except, he believed it all. Mom said it caused their divorce. Because he couldn't tell the difference between real and pretend anymore.

Lucky for Dad, tons of people believed in pretend so when he wrote a book about aliens, then another one about ghosts, he made a lot of money. Lots of people admired Andy McNabb. Not Abby though. She loved him, but wrote him off as crazy. Mom did too. Mom said the only people who didn't think he was nuts must be a little imbalanced.

Abby looked over enviously at Claudia, with her thin straight shining blonde hair, always positioned right in place. By contrast, Abby's hair was brown, thick and too curly to control. Claudia's ears: double pierced. Abbys: not one lousy piercing. Claudia's parents: still married, and Abby's: long divorced. Abbys jealousy bubbled up in her so strong she could taste it. Mom encouraged her to focus on good things in her life. Not an easy task when her best friend's life seemed so perfect.

Just then, Dad's car pulled into the driveway. He lived on Acorn Hill, in a brick cottage, three houses from Lily, George, and Claudia, right by the 16th hole on a golf course. Two years ago when he returned from a mysterious trip to Peru, he lucked out and found that place for sale on Lilys street and snatched it right up. Paid cash on the spot. Some people thought it funny Dad and Mom lived just a couple of streets apart, but Abby liked it this way. Sometimes she pretended they had never split up at all.

Abby rolled her eyes as Dad's black car came into view. A giant green painted alien decorated his hood, and a bumper sticker read, "I brake for Martians." As Claudia and she started for the car, her mother called through the window, "Girls, remember, everything he says is pretend. None of it's real."

"Okay, Mom," Abby said.

"Okay, Saffron," Claudia called out.

Dad, who had the same curly brown hair as Abby, stepped out of his car. He opened the backdoor and ushered the girls into the backseat. They buckled up and he said, "Remember girls, people don't have to believe in things to make them real. Do you have to see something to believe it?" He always contradicted whatever Mom said.

They smiled. "No way, we believe everything!"

"There's my girls. Ready for an adventure today?" He spun the bright crystal that hung from his rearview mirror. Weird, but maybe a little cool. Just a little. "Is Chase coming? Will he be joining us on our journey today?"

"Yes, he's coming too," Abby said. "He's always wanted to see America's Stonehenge; plus he's just sitting home alone again."

Chase's parents were both lawyers who worked constantly. They left the raising and nurturing of their son to Nanny, an old thin woman with the personality of a mannequin. Since Chase was related to Abby on Mom's side, a second cousin or something, Mom and Dad included him as often as they could.

"Is it far? He's supposed to be home for supper," Abby asked.

"No, it's in Salem, New Hampshire, only about fifteen minutes from here. He's having dinner with Nanny no doubt?"

"Yup."

Dad shook his head. "All right then. Off to Chase's house we go!" Dad turned on his Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon CD and told the girls to listen carefully to the words. "Secret messages," he said.

"Your dad is awesome," Claudia said. Abby groaned.

They drove the short route to Chase's house. He was nine like Abby and in her class at school, with the same birthday as Dad. Supposedly "a sign." Chase jumped up from his outside steps when they arrived in the alien car.

"Hi, Mr. McNabb," he said as he scooted Abby over in the backseat.

"Hi, Chase," Dad said. "You know, you can just call me Andy like everyone else. You don't have to be so formal."

"It's okay, Mr. McNabb. My mom said I have to call people Mr. or Mrs. or Ms."

"All right then. But if she changes her mind, it's okay with me. Hey, what do you kids know about America's Stonehenge?" Silence echoed through the backseat. He gave them a little more time and finally, Abby spoke.

"Lots of stones?" she guessed.

"Yup," he replied. "A whole village of stacked stones and lots of underground caves. They used to call it Mystery Hill and it's mysterious for a few reasons."

"What?" Claudia asked.

"One," he put his finger up, "no one knows for sure who built the village. It's very old and was built long before other people settled in America."

"Columbus discovered America," Claudia said. Claudia was sweet, but truth be told wasn't the brightest bulb. Abby loved her, but sometimes got frustrated when she tried too hard to appear smart, blurting out facts.

"Well," Dad said as he moved the mirror to see her face, "It really wasn't Columbus. That's what they like you to think." Abby rolled up her eyes to Chase. Good ole Dad, always talking about the mysterious they. He continued. "Lots of other people were here long before Columbus. Native Americans, Vikings, lots of others. That's why it's not called Columbia."

"Dad, who is America named after?"

"Amerigo Vespucci."

"So, he came here before Columbus?" Chase asked.

"Well, no. He landed later."

Chase looked to Abby who frowned. She hated it when her dad talked in circles. Sometimes he seemed brilliant, and other times...she hated to even think the word...crazy.

"But Columbus didnt get here first, he continued. Claudia slumped in her seat. "The second thing," he put two fingers up, "there are villages just like America's Stonehenge far away, in many parts of the world. And they're all about the same age. About four thousand years old."

"Four thousand? Wow," Abby said.

Dad moved the mirror to see his daughter's reflection. "Four thousand years old. We don't have records of anyone being here back then. So who could it have been?"

"Aliens?" Claudia asked nervously, hoping for the right answer.

"Just may be," he said. Claudia smiled to Abby and Chase.

"What's the third thing, Mr. McNabb? You said there were a few mysterious things. And a few is three," Chase said.

Dad tilted his mirror one more time to see Chase's face. "I don't have a third just yet, but I will." He paused and then said, "I have a surprise in the trunk."

"What is it?" asked Claudia.

"A magical device used to find treasures in the ground."

"A metal detector?" Abby asked.

"Close, my little conspiracy kid, but even better. Dowsing Rods." They all started to ask questions at the same time, but Dad put up his hand. "No more talking now, we're here. I'll explain it all as we go."

They pulled into the parking lot and exited the car. Ahead of them a gift shop teetered on a leaf-covered hill. "America's Stonehenge," the sign above it read. Dad popped his trunk and took out a large stick forked in two, a giant wooden letter Y. He dug around and pulled out another smaller one.

"What are those?" Chase asked.

"These are the dowsing rods. People around the world have been using them for at least seven thousand years." He handed the small one to Chase. "You hold it like this, with the V part in your hands. Concentrate very hard on what you want to find. Aim the point at the ground like this, and think." Dad walked around in a circle. Abby thought he looked very foolish. He embarrassed her, but Chase and Claudia seemed thrilled so Abby remained silent.

"You'll feel a pull, like the pull of a magnet, when you find what you're looking for." He pretended to get yanked left then right, jerking all over. The kids watched in amazement. Then he started laughing. "Just kidding. I didn't find anything. Where was I? Oh, yes. Some people use them for water, or metal. There are even reports of using them to find missing people but I don't know if I believe it. Maybe though. You just never know."

Chase closed his eyes and walked around, trancelike, with his stick.

"Let me try," Claudia said. Chase gave her the stick. She aimed the point to the ground. "I don't feel anything," she said quickly.

"Patience, little blonde-haired girl, patience. Abby, don't you want to try?"

No, I dont want to, she thought. Bad enough doing silly things around her best friend, her cousin and her dad. But in public? "What are we looking for?" She folded her arms in defiance and refused to take the stick from Claudia. "And how can we find it with a plain old stick?"

Dad frowned. "Thats not very open-minded thinking. This is hardly a plain old stick." He rubbed the bark on his adult-sized dowsing rod. "It's made of hazel wood. Anyway, what makes it special is how your mind works with it. We could pick up any stick here and it would work the same. But you have to believe."

Chase ran off with Claudia to the tree line. In a few minutes, they came back with sticks forked at the end, just like Dad's. "Will these work?" Chase asked.

"Let me see," Dad said. He closed his eyes and felt the wood. "Do you believe they'll work?"

"Yes," Chase and Claudia said together.

"Well then, they will. Abby, you take the hazel rod."

She picked up the stick from the ground where Claudia had left it. At least they all had dowsing rods. They could look silly together. "You didn't say what were looking for though, Dad." Abby asked.

"We're looking for the answers, Abby." He said it with such seriousness, Abby felt guilty for condemning the rods as stupid. Mom always stressed Dads belief in all the pretend stuff. He really and truly believed it. Provable or not, it was real to him. Thats what mattered.

"If you believe it, Dad, so do I. Let's go guys," Abby said, suddenly enthusiastic about helping her dad.

His face lit up. "Great. Onward then. Let's go see what answers we can find!"



The kids ran excitedly toward the gift shop but Dad stayed back, caught up in looking at the falling orange, red, and yellow leaves. Suddenly he felt cold. Glacial, and more than a little scared. He zipped his coat all the way to his chin but it did no good. Chilled to the bone. The wind whistling through the trees sounded like a hundred voices calling out his name. He stared past the gift shop up the hill, wondering...so much written about Mystery Hill, now called America's Stonehenge, yet with all of his investigations he had never looked into the mysteries surrounding it. He wondered why. How had he missed it, when he lived just ten miles away? Only this week the idea to explore it came to him. Now its all he thought about.

A ball of light suddenly whizzed right toward his head. He dove out of the way just in time, hitting the ground hard and banging his wrist. Then the ball disappeared. What the heck? Bright colored lights flashed around the edges of his vision and he grew dizzy but then it all faded just as quickly. He looked to the children but they had turned away. No one had seen. Did I imagine it? he wondered. He picked up his dowsing rod, took a deep breath for courage, and followed the children inside.